By Virginia Langhammer
25 May, 2018
Jane Eyre & Female Missionaries' Memoirs:
Understanding Female Agency in Missionary Work in the Nineteenth Century
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Missionary work is one of the most relevant themes of the colonial period addressed in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. As portrayed in the novel, the position of missionary was exclusive to men until the later nineteenth century. The novel shows Brontë's knowledge of women's collaboration in missionary work in the British colonies and reveals that women most likely engaged in missionary work as missionaries' wives. Nonetheless, our current understanding of the role of women in Christian missions brings to light these women's significant position as imperial agents. Women carried the important role of educating girls and women in the colonies, a position often times unacceptable for a man. Many of these women wrote memoirs with an extensive account of their work. These memoirs were often posthumous publications edited by the author's husband or another man and were largely distributed as a way of encouraging other women to support the missionary cause. Interestingly, the evangelical discourse in Jane Eyre and its accurate representation of the life of the missionary St. John Rivers reveals the undeniable resemblance between the novel and female missionaries' memoirs. In this essay, I aim to analyze the similarities between Jane Eyre and the memoirs of Harriet Newell and Elizabeth Harvard, and argue that Jane Eyre both reinforces imperial ideas and challenges the role of women in missionary work. While the novel does successfully portray the life of a missionary, Jane Eyre reverses traditional gender dynamics in missionary work by claiming the right to work as a missionary herself and taking over the role of the editor of a posthumous story of a male missionary.
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Unable to work as missionaries in their own right, women engaged in missionary work in the colonies as missionaries' wives and played an important role in the education of native women and girls. Clare Midgley offers an extensive account of the role of women in missionary work in her article called "Can Women Be Missionaries?" She argues that even though the title of missionary was attributed exclusively to men, women's role were not less important than men's, and brings up the importance of missionary wives' memoirs as a tool to motivate other women to join the missionary cause. According to Midgley, many women engaged in voluntary work in organizations that promoted and raised funds to support missionary work overseas, but only missionaries’ wives were sent to the field. Midgley says, "Wives were seen as providing an important domestic base for their husbands and as modeling proper feminine domesticity to indigenous women. ... [T]hey were also recognized as playing an important role in the development of girls’ education" (Midgley 339-340). In this passage, Midgley is referring to places like India, where sexual segregation made the presence of missionary women essential if they were to teach women and girls. Later, missionary societies started recruiting single women to go to the colonies as "agents" - not missionaries - but "it was still very difficult for single women to overcome familial objections to engage in such work" (Midgley 348). For this reason, missionaries’ wives represent the most relevant participation of women in missionary work in the nineteenth century.
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We see Midgley's points in Jane Eyre, when the missionary St. John Rivers desires to bring a wife with him to India in order to help him with his mission. For Mr. Rivers, Jane's education and character makes her a good fit for the role of a missionary wife. In his proposal, he says: "Jane, come with me to India: come as my helpmate and fellow-labourer... God and nature intended you for a missionary's wife. It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary's wife you must - shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you - not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign's service" (Brontë 464). In John's words, we see his cold and severe nature, which is the expected behavior of a missionary. He does not want to marry Jane because he loves her, but because she would be useful to the missionary cause. He says, "As a conductress of Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women, your assistance will be to me invaluable" (Brontë 465). In this passage, we see Midgley's point that missionary wives played an important role in the education of woman in the colonies. St. John wants Jane to accompany him as a "helpmate", which implies her subordination to him while also suggesting that she would be fulfilling an important mission in the service of God.
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Jane Eyre, however, refuses St. John's proposal and questions the purpose of marriage among missionaries. She accepts to accompany him under the condition that she might be independent: "I am ready to go to India, if I may go free" (Brontë 467). In other words, Jane would be willing to go to India with St. John if she could be a missionary herself, but not as his wife. She protests against his notion of marriage and cannot accept the idea of marrying someone who did not love her. She says, "He prizes me as a soldier would a good weapon, and that is all" (Brontë 467). St. John, on the other hand, questions her Christianity: "Do you think God will be satisfied with half an oblation? Will He accept a mutilated sacrifice? It is the cause of God I advocate: it is under His standard I enlist you... if you reject it, it is not me you deny, but God" (Brontë 468, 471). St. John implies that, as a good Christian, Jane should be willing to sacrifice herself for this cause. The word "enlist" implies that missionary work is a kind of "warfare" against paganism. Accordingly, St. John's marriage proposal is a kind of "enlistment" rather than a romantic proposal. Although Jane is a Christian woman and hesitates in her decision, she defies St. John's proposal and cannot accept "to be chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool" (Brontë 479). Ultimately, we may say that Jane Eyre is questioning women's lack of autonomy in missionary work.
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Interestingly, Jane Eyre's St. John Rivers was inspired by the real missionary and priest Henry Martyn. In the article "Henry Martyn and England's Christian Empire: Rereading 'Jane Eyre' through Missionary Biography," Mary Gibson compares Martyn's memoir with Brontë's Jane Eyre and tries to show why Martyn served as a model to Brontë and many other authors. According to Gibson, "Jane Eyre is along with Martyn's own journal the most emotionally powerful version of his life" (Gibson 433). In other words, Gibson is saying that St. John is an accurate representation of the life and personality of Henry Martyn. Like Jane Eyre's St. John, Henry Martyn proposes marriage to his friend Lydia Grenfell inviting her to join him in India. Martyn writes a letter to Lydia where he says, "I can truly say, and God is my witness, that my principal desire in this affair is, that you may promote the kingdom of God in my own heart, and be the means of extending it to the heathen" (Gibson 420). Like St. John, Martyn sees his future wife as an assistant who will help him in his mission, and like Jane Eyre, Lydia Grenfell refuses to become the wife of a missionary, unwilling to sacrifice her life for the missionary cause. In the end, as St. John, Martyn dies in India while working in his mission and is seeing as an exemplary missionary who sacrificed his life for a greater cause. The accurate representation of the life of a missionary in Jane Eyre brings to light the similarity of the novel with missionaries’ memoirs that were being published during the same period.
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In the beginning of the nineteenth century, a new genre of female missionaries' memoirs emerged. These memoirs were often posthumous publications, edited and published by the husbands of these women or another man. The memoir of the American missionary Mrs. Harriet Newell was the first one of the kind to be published in England in 1815, the memoir of the British-born Elizabeth Harvard was published in 1825, and many others were published after that (Midgley 341-343). Accoding to Midgley, although female missionary memoirs did not receive the same attention given to male missionaries publications, several thousands of copies were frequently printed and distributed. Midgley says, "The memoirs were often framed by a substantial introduction by the bereaved husband or by another male supporter of missions explaining the reasons for publication and suggesting how the memoir should be read as an example to other women, encouraging them to take up the missionary cause" (Midgley 341). In other words, these memoirs were edited and transformed in a kind of propaganda of missionary work, which encouraged other women to either marry missionaries or work as agents in missionary schools themselves.
Harriet Newell was the first wife of a missionary to have her memoir published both in America and Britain. She was only nineteen years old when she died, soon after accompanying with her husband to India in 1812, and was considered "the first martyr to the missionary cause, from the American world" (Midgley 341). Her memoir was edited and published in 1815 by her husband, Reverend Samuel Newell. The title of her memoir says Memoirs of Mrs. H. Newell, wife of the Rev. S. Newell, American Missionary to India. In the title itself we already see the implicit main idea of the book, which is to tell the story a woman who dedicated her life to the missionary cause. The title carries the message that the book is not simply telling the story a woman, but the story of the wife of a missionary. Reverend Newell proposes marriage to Harriet when she is eighteen years old, and invites her to accompany him to India to help him in his mission, which is to teach the gospel to the heathen. She vacillates in her decision, but her religious belief doesn't allow her to refuse Mrs. Newell's invitation, as she explains in a letter to a friend:
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"I tell you that I do think, seriously think, of quitting my native land for ever, and of going to a far distant country, ' not knowing the things which shall befal me there.' Should I refuse to make this sacrifice, refuse to lend my little aid in the promulgation of the gospel among the heathen, how could I ever expect to enjoy the blessing of God, and peace of conscience, though surrounded with every temporal mercy?" (65)
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In this passage, we can see a similarity between Harriet and Jane Eyre. Like Jane, Harriet is afraid of going "to a far distant country", but unlike Jane, Harriet doesn't have a strong reason to refuse the missionary call. She implies she would feel guilty if she enjoyed the "blessing of God" without making the sacrifice that was asked of her. There is an implication that she is going with Mr. Newell as his helpmate to aid in his endeavor to promote the gospel among the heathen. Like the character St. John in Jane Eyre, Reverend Newell's proposal seems more like an enlistment for a war against paganism than a marriage proposal. At no time does Harriet mention the word marriage or love in her memoir. The relationship between her and her husband is of mere friendship, sustained by their greater mission that is to bring the Christian teachings to the natives of India.
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Similarly, the excerpt of Mrs. Harvard's memoir in Reverend Thomas Timpson's book, Memoirs of British Female Missionaries, shows her commitment to the missionary cause. When she is proposed to get married to Reverend Harvard and help him in his missionary life, she responds positively: "It is my own desire to be useful, whether in my native land or on a foreign shore. I feel my own weakness: but surely shall one say, 'In the Lord have I righteousness and strength:' and to me Christ is all and in all" (Timson 35). Mrs. Harvard mentions her "weakness," which means that, as Harriet, she also fears moving to a distant country and all the sacrifice that it implies, but she is decided to give her life for the missionary cause. As Harriet and Jane Eyre, Mrs. Harvard does not mention any romantic relationship with her fiancé, since the Christian mission is the one and only reason of the marriage.
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One of the main motivations of missionaries' wives is to bring the gospel to foreign places that considered uncivilized, which brings to light the imperialist ideas that were carried by these memoirs. In Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire, Antoinette Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr talk about the way books work as material agents of empire, helping to circulate and reinforce imperial ideas. Burton mentions the King James Bible as "the best example of a book conscripted into an imperial role: a tome conferring the philanthropic gift of Christianity and civilization, it was imagined in some evangelical accounts to be capable of traveling by itself through different landscapes of 'palm and pine' and creating a unified Christian empire in its wake" (Burton 1). In other words, the evangelical discourse in the Bible and its strong religious appeal transforms the book in a powerful tool to spread imperial ideas. Furthermore, the portability of the book makes it possible to travel from hand to hand, reaching a larger number of people. According to Burton, books "are themselves material agents: path-makers for the circulation of ideas and discourses and, as such, makers of history in the bargain" (Burton 9). As I'm going to discuss next, Jane Eyre and female missionaries' memoirs, like the Bible, worked as material agents of empire, spreading imperial ideas while making use of evangelical discourse.
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Both Jane Eyre and the memoirs of Mrs. Newell and Mrs. Harvard propagate both imperialist and orientalist ideas, especially when they refer to the natives of the colonies as "heathen," implying that the only true religion is the one they learned in Britain and America. This idea that the West is good and Christian while the East is bad and pagan evokes Edward Said's theory of Orientalism. According to Said, "Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, 'us') and the strange (the Orient, the East, 'them')" (Said 43). We see this idea of 'us' versus 'them' in Harriet Newell's memoir when she expresses her wish to see the entire world converted to Christianity: "Oh, when will the high praises of Immanuel resound from the lips of the Hindoo in Asia, the Hottentot of Africa, and the inhospitable Indian of our dear native America!" (Newell 98). Although she is not British, she is referring to places that are or were British colonies, including America. Her mention of Native Americans1 brings to light the colonial situation of the natives in the United States. Even though America is no longer a colony, the natives are still being colonized. Similarly, Mrs. Harvard's memoir expresses her desire to convert the natives of the colonies into Christianity: "I am willing to go anywhere where God may call us, even to the end of the earth. I should be happy to traverse those parts of Africa... I should like to go hut to hut, and talk to the poor heathen" (Timson 45). Mrs. Harvard implies that Africa is the "end of the earth" and that Africans are pagans. We see one more time the implicit idea that the colonies need to be saved by the Christians.
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There are similar orientalist ideas in Jane Eyre, when Mr. Brocklehurst refers to Indians as "little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma," which makes a clear reference to the natives of India (Brontë 79). When St. John invites Jane to go with him to India, she is certain she would be going "to premature death," and St John mentions they would be among "savage tribes," suggesting that India is an uncivilized place that needs his help (Brontë 466,470). This passage recalls Said's point that the Western sees the Oriental as "a subject race, dominated by a race that knows them and what is good for them better than they could possibly know themselves" (Said 35). In other words, Said is saying that the colonizers see the colonized as ignorant and childish people who desperately need their help. Ultimately, Brontë, Newell and Harvard's words carry the orientalist idea that the colonies are inhospitable places that need to be saved, civilized and educated by the colonizer, and that missionaries are saviors that sacrifice their lives for this greater cause.
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The idea of sacrifice for the missionary work is strengthened by the voice of the husband of each one of these women when they talk about their own wife's death. Reverend Harvard says in a letter to a friend: "while [Mrs. Harvard] continued in the body, she cherished her missionary zeal, and rendered what service she was able to the cause of her Savior, until her spirit entered into the joy of the Lord!" (Timson 49). In this passage, the Reverend suggests that Mrs. Harvard never regretted dedicating her life to the missionary cause, that her service was of great value and for that reason her spirit rested in peace. In a similar way, Reverend Newell talks about his wife in a letter to his mother: "dear Harriet never repented of any sacrifice she had made for Christ ; that on her dying bed, she was comforted with the thought of having it in her heart to do something for the heathen... Harriet's bones have taken possession of the promised land, and rest in glorious hope of the final and universal triumph of Jesus over the gods of this world" (Newell 162). As Mr. Harvard, Mr. Newell's words carry the message that his wife never regretted having dedicated her life "to do something for the heathen." Both Mr. Newell and Mr. Harvard suggest that their wives sacrificed their life for the missionary cause and are now in their rightful place in heaven. Accordingly, these women are seen as martyrs who abdicated their comfortable position to go to a foreign land in a Christian mission that cost their own lives. Their stories create a strong appeal to other religious women, encouraging them to support missionary work.
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According to Midgley, many women decided to join the missionary work or marry missionaries after reading the memoirs of missionaries' wives like Harriet Newell and Elizabeth Harvard (Midgley 344). In the preface of his book, Reverend Thomas Timpson encourages women to support the missionary cause. He says, "heathen in every region of the globe are calling for help to British Christians (Timpson ix). In other words, Timpson implies that other nations need to be saved by the British. Timpson's words recall Burton's point that books work as material agents that carried imperialist ideas (Burton 9). Timpson's book is directly summoning women to join the missionary work. He addresses women only when he says, "Women, possessing those indispensable qualifications which have conferred imperishable honour... are needed to accompany the servants of Christ in their evangelical missions" (Timpson ix). In this passage, women are being recruited to go to this "war," but it is implicit that they must go as companions to men and not alone. Reverend Timpson words reveal the expectation regarding women role in missionary work, which is to serve as helpmates and assistants to the real missionaries.
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Interestingly, Jane Eyre completely reverses gender dynamics when it comes to missionary memoirs. In the novel, instead of seeing a man telling the story of a deceased female missionary wife, we see a woman telling the story of a male missionary friend. The last words of the novel are about the death of the missionary St. John. In a letter to Jane, he says, "My Master... has forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly, 'Surely I come quickly!' and hourly I more eagerly respond, 'Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!'" (Brontë 521). In his words, he implies he is ready to die and join his "Lord Jesus" in heaven. We see here the same idea of sacrifice for the missionary cause that we see in the missionaries' memoirs. Like Mrs. Newell and Mrs. Harvard, St. John dies a Martyr. Jane mentions that although she is sad that he is about to die, she knows he is going to a better place: "The last letter I received from him drew my eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart with divine joy: he anticipated his true reward, his incorruptible crown... And why weep for this? No fear of death will darken St. John's last hour" (Brontë 521). The words "incorruptible crown" implies that St. John is a saint. In other terms, the missionary St. John is sanctified in the novel and represented as a true philanthropic and selfless person. As we see it, the imperialist message offered by the novel is similar to that of the missionaries' memoirs, which is that the colonies need the help of the Christian missionaries to save them from paganism, and that the missionary cause is a noble and necessary one. Nevertheless, Jane's resistance against the purpose of missionary marriage and her reversal of gender roles in telling the story of St. John challenges the traditional gender dynamics in missionary work and at the time and reveals Jane's own role as an independent missionary.
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Although Jane Eyre challenges established ideas regarding missionary work, she acts as a missionary herself. She does not go to foreign lands, but she does evangelize the heathen in her own land when she educates her uncivilized students at Morton and when she converts Rochester into a good Christian. Jane talks about the girls at Morton as if they were savages being civilized: "Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, they seemed to me hopelessly dull.... but soon I found I was mistaken... Their amazement at me, my language, my rules, and ways, once subsided, I found some of these heavy-looking, gasping rustics wake up into sharp-witted girls enough" (Brontë 422). Even though Jane refused to teach girls in India, she fulfills her role as a missionary and educator of uncivilized girls in her own country. Furthermore, Jane's presence and attitude inspires Rochester to become a Christian. He says, "Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now... I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, He has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto!" (Brontë 514-516). In the end, Jane is reunited with a new Rochester, who is no longer a pagan, but a reformed and pious man. Although Jane is not a missionary in the literal sense, she does convert the heathen into Christian, which shows her function as a missionary.
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Brontë's novel exposes the complexity of gender dynamics in missionary work. On the one hand, the novel faithfully portrays the life of a missionary who dedicates his life to the missionary cause. The similarities between Jane Eyre and female missionaries' memoirs reveals the authenticity of the representation of missionary work in the novel and also evinces its function as an imperial material agent. On the other hand, the novel questions the position of women in missionary work and reverses gender roles by placing Jane in the position of total autonomy. While Mrs. Newell and Mrs. Harvard have their story edited and told by their husbands, Jane Eyre is alive and free to tell her own story and undertake the role of the editor of St. John's memoir. As I have demonstrated in this essay, Jane Eyre successfully challenges the established notions of female agency in missionary work in the nineteenth century, while at the same time sustaining its role as a material agent of Empire.
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Notes
1. Amanda Moulder talks about missionary work within Native American Communities in the article called “Cherokee Practice, Missionary Intentions: Literacy Learning among Early Nineteenth-Century Cherokee Women.” Moulder argues that even though Native Americans assimilated the language and culture of the colonizer, some Cherokee women such as Catherine Brown also used her education for the good of her people. Catharine Brown was a Cherokee, a missionary, and the first Native American missionary woman to have her memoir published. As a Native American who gave up her own religion and culture to follow and teach the white man's religion, Brown is at the same time an agent and a subject of Empire. According to Moulder, "the influence of colonial education did not preclude Brown from using this education for Cherokee-centric, and even political, purposes." Brown's memoir was published in 1825 by the missionary Rufus Anderson, with the main purpose "to send the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations" (84). Moulder points out that "While the text exhibits Browns conversion to Christianity, we can also read her English-language writing as serving the goals of the emerging Cherokee Nation" (84). As a Native American in the times of colonialism, Brown's conversion to Christianity can be seen as assimilation, survival, or both.
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Works Cited
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. London: Penguin, 2006. Print.
Brown, Catharine, and Gaul, Theresa Strouth. Cherokee Sister: the Collected Writings of Catharine Brown, 1818-1823. 2014. Print.
Burton, Antoinette and Hofmeyr, Isabel, editors. Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons. Duke University Press, 2016, pp. 1-27.
Gibson, Mary Ellis. “Henry Martyn and England's Christian Empire: Rereading ‘Jane Eyre’ through Missionary Biography.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 27, no. 2, 1999, pp. 419–442. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25058462.
Midgley, Clare. “Can Women Be Missionaries? Envisioning Female Agency in the Early Nineteenth Century British Empire.” Journal of British Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2006, pp. 335–358. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/499791.
Moulder, M. Amanda. “Cherokee Practice, Missionary Intentions: Literacy Learning among Early Nineteenth-Century Cherokee Women.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 63, no. 1, 2011, pp. 75–97. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23006897.
Newell, Harriet, 1793-1812. Memoirs of Mrs. Harriet Newell: Wife of the Rev. Samuel Newell, American Missionary to India. London: J.F. Dove, 18--. www.hathitrust.org.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. NY: Vintage, 1979. Print.
Timpson, Thomas. Memoirs of British Female Missionaries; with a Survey of the Condition of Women in Heathen Countries. W. Smith, 1841. Nineteenth Century Collections Online, http://tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/6Qmtj2. Accessed 25 Apr. 2018.
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